appleseedhq/appleseed

A modern open source rendering engine for animation and visual effects

C++

2,329

11,016 commits

updated Jun 11, 2026

See the code

README

appleseed Build Status Build status Documentation Status DOI

Interior Scene by Juan Carlos Gutiérrez

Using OSL v1.13.12.0

Using OSL v1.13.12.0 as the newest minor version of OSL -- v1.14 -- has raised the Python minimum to 3.7 (from 2.7).

Overview

appleseed is an open source, physically-based global illumination rendering engine primarily designed for animation and visual effects.

appleseed is actively developed by a small, international team of talented volunteers from the animation and VFX industry. Its core mission is to provide individuals and small studios with a complete, reliable, fully open rendering package.

Over the years appleseed has been used on several projects including TV documentaries, ads, promotional videos and an animation short.

appleseed is available as a portable C++ library with C++ and Python APIs, as a set of standalone applications for Windows, Linux and macOS, and as native plugins for content creation applications. Downloads →

Read more…

On the Web

Contributing

Citing

appleseed releases have DOIs for scientific citation: https://zenodo.org/record/3456967.

License

appleseed and its accompanying software is released under the MIT license.

© 2010-2019 The appleseedhq Organization

3dsmax
animation
blender
cpp
lighting
maya
python
qt
rendering
vfx
visual-effects

appleseedhq/appleseed

A modern open source rendering engine for animation and visual effects

C++

2,329

11,016 commits

updated Jun 11, 2026

See the code

README

appleseed Build Status Build status Documentation Status DOI

Interior Scene by Juan Carlos Gutiérrez

Using OSL v1.13.12.0

Using OSL v1.13.12.0 as the newest minor version of OSL -- v1.14 -- has raised the Python minimum to 3.7 (from 2.7).

Overview

appleseed is an open source, physically-based global illumination rendering engine primarily designed for animation and visual effects.

appleseed is actively developed by a small, international team of talented volunteers from the animation and VFX industry. Its core mission is to provide individuals and small studios with a complete, reliable, fully open rendering package.

Over the years appleseed has been used on several projects including TV documentaries, ads, promotional videos and an animation short.

appleseed is available as a portable C++ library with C++ and Python APIs, as a set of standalone applications for Windows, Linux and macOS, and as native plugins for content creation applications. Downloads →

Read more…

On the Web

Contributing

Citing

appleseed releases have DOIs for scientific citation: https://zenodo.org/record/3456967.

License

appleseed and its accompanying software is released under the MIT license.

© 2010-2019 The appleseedhq Organization

3dsmax
animation
blender
cpp
lighting
maya
python
qt
rendering
vfx
visual-effects

Project health

Overall

3.2/10

Maintained

0/10

Code review

8/10
OpenSSF Scorecard

Significant stargazers

Benjamin Elder

885 followers · starred Apr 2015

Bob Nystrom

11,092 followers · starred Feb 2017

Lukas Bergdoll

127 followers · starred May 2018

Gregory Popovitch

260 followers · starred Jun 2018